Note 300 — VI SOUTH LONDON GROUP

Allen (History of Lambeth, 319) states that the Apollo Gardens were suppressed about 1791, but this is certainly erroneous, as the gardens were frequently advertised in 1792. Kearsley’s Strangers’ Guide to London (1793?) mentions the place as “the resort of company in the evenings,” and says that music was occasionally performed there. The Temple of Apollo was described about 1796–7 in A Modern Sabbath as already becoming ruinous, and it is there stated that Claggett, the proprietor, had become bankrupt. A newspaper paragraph of December 1796 refers to a field opposite the Asylum, close by “the ditch that encircles that place of late infamous resort, the Apollo Gardens.”